From the above account it appears that much injustice may probably be carried on by the inferior officers of the government which never gets to the ears of the Pasha, small officials being notoriously more tyrannical than greater men. The Pasha himself appears to be a kind-hearted, well-intentioned man in a general way; but, in cases where his own interest is not directly concerned, he does not look into the affairs of the pashalik with sufficient keenness to prevent his subordinate officers from practicing various acts of oppression and extortion, according to the fashion of the good old times, when Turkey, like the United States of America, was a land of liberty, where every free and independent citizen had the right to beat his own nigger; for, according to some doctors of the law, pashas, vizirs, &c., might cut off a few heads every day for no given reason, but just for amusement. The Sultan had the privilege of destroying fourteen lives per day of his faithful subjects, who might have committed no crime; after that number, some reason was expected to be shown for the further use of the sword and bow-string on that day. Now the case is altered: fewer crimes are committed in Turkey than in London, and the Turkish pashas endeavor to stop such practices as are considered discreditable on the part of the inferior officers; though they have to contend with great difficulties in a country where it is hardly possible to get at the truth, and where the inferior officers have for generations been accustomed to plunder those below them, directly they are out of sight of the higher authorities; trusting to the want of communication, the slight knowledge of writing, and the many obstacles in the way which prevent the poor man’s story getting to the ears of the Pasha or the Sultan, who, in these days at least, are anxious to remedy such abuses, and to distribute justice with a tolerably impartial hand. I had great satisfaction in hearing afterward that, owing to my exertions in this and other cases—the good cause being taken up warmly by Colonel Williams, after I was gone—all torture was authoritatively abolished in the pashalik of Erzeroom; and I am in hopes that, except in some snug little dungeon in the rocky castle of a half independent Koordish chief, this horrible custom is almost extinct.
The Koord above mentioned was hanged in so original a manner that I must shortly describe it, as it took place immediately under my window. What we called at school a cat-gallows was erected close to a bridge, over the little stream which ran down the horse-market, between my house and the bottom of the hill of the citadel. The culprit stood under this; the cross-beam was not two feet above his head; a kawass, having tied a rope to one end of the beam, passed a slip-knot round the neck of the Koord, a young and very handsome man, with long black hair; he then drew the rope over the other end of the beam, and pulled away till the poor man’s feet were just off the ground, when he tied the rope in a knot, leaving the dead body hanging, supported by two ropes in the form of the letter V. Hardly any one was looking on, and in the afternoon the body was taken down and buried.
I shall always consider this case as a remarkable instance of the power of fatalism over the mind of an ignorant and superstitious man. This Koord was entirely the cause of his own execution: no one knew him by sight at Erzeroom, and there was not the slightest necessity for his declaring his name to the Pasha, and confessing that he had committed murders and outrages of all kinds among the villages of Koordistaun. His punishment for stealing a horse would not have been very severe, and, but for his voluntary admission that he was a notorious malefactor, for whom the police had long been on the look-out, he might have been alive to this day, to rob and murder, till somebody shot him, or he became too old for the exertion. Fatalism, in other cases, has a powerful influence over the true believers in the armies of Islam. The soldier goes to battle with the firm belief that, if his hour is not come, the cannon of the enemy can have no power over him; and that if his hour is arrived, the angel of death will call him, whether he may be seated on his divan, or walking in full health in his garden at home: just as readily does he bow his head to fate in one place as in another. By this institution of the Koran, the wonderful genius of Mohammed has gained many a victory by the hands of his trusting and believing followers for the caliphs and sultans of his creed. Some of the reforms of Sultan Mahmoud, by treating lightly many of the ancient prejudices of the Osmanlis, have shaken the throne under his feet. The progress of infidelity, which has begun at Constantinople, is the greatest temporal danger to the power of the Turkish empire. The Turk implicitly believes the tenets of his religion; he keeps its precepts and obeys its laws; he is proud of his faith, and prays in public when the hour of prayer arrives. How different, alas! is the manner in which the divine laws of Christianity are kept! The Christian seems ashamed of his religion; as for obeying the doctrines of the Gospel, they have no perceptible effect upon the mass of the people, among whom drunkenness, dishonesty, and immorality prevail almost unchecked, except by the fear of punishment in this world; while in Turkey not one tenth part of the crime exists which is annually committed in Christendom.
A few days after this occurrence, as I was sitting in the summer chamber at the top of the house, I heard a most extraordinary shuffling and screeching behind the curtain which hung over the door; the curtain shook about, and numerous subdued voices and noises were heard, which sounded like cocks and hens suffering from strangulation. I shouted out to know what in the world was going on; after a while the kawass drew aside the curtain, and along the floor advanced a most strange and incomprehensible procession of several women and men, crawling on their hands and knees, each with a cock or a hen in their hands, whose fluttering, and screaming, and crowing now broke forth in full chorus; one or two got away, and flew about the room, as its owner, making use of her hands to walk with, was unable to hold the terrified fowl. This procession advanced to the divan, and, without saying a word, the foremost woman seized hold of one of my legs, which was inadvertently sticking out, and, holding on to my ankle, kissed my foot, and burst out into a string of exclamations in Armenian, no one word of which made any impression on my understanding. Being horribly alarmed, I kicked as well as I could, and, having escaped into the remotest corner of the divan, I begged to know what all this portended; and on the chickens being caught, and comparative silence obtained, I found that these were the family of the poor oda bashi, who had brought the chickens as a present, and came with tears to thank me for saving their father, brother, or husband. They were really pained, poor people, when I would not accept the cocks and hens, for, though of little value, it looked like receiving a bribe for justice; and, after a long explanation of my strange notions, they walked off in smiles upon their hind legs, the cocks crowing triumphantly on their way down stairs.
CHAPTER VI.
The Clock of Erzeroom.—A Pasha’s Notions of Horology.—Pathology of Clocks.—The Tower and Dungeon.—Ingenious Mode of Torture.—The modern Prison.
In the citadel—a place which might, with great ease, be rendered very strong, but which now is deserted and disused, having, I believe, been knocked to pieces in the Russian war—there are still two or three curious ancient tombs and some other incomprehensible old buildings. The building containing the prison, which was in constant use in the good old times, and the tower, from whence the flag of Turkey is displayed, possessed an old clock, which had been out of order for many years before the Russians carried it away, but which was the wonder and admiration of all Koords, Armenians, and strangers from the mountains, to whom time was “no object,” and who considered this old clock, with its dial and hands, as some sort of talisman beyond the comprehension of ordinary folks. Erzeroom was indeed lifted up in the estimation of those unsophisticated herdsmen and robbers, as the only place they ever heard of where any thing in the nature of a clock was to be seen. It might happen that some few of those who not only were possessed of such an outlandish article as a watch, but who were in some measure initiated into the uses of that strange production, would expatiate learnedly in the coffee-houses on the wondrous properties of the great talisman in the tower of the citadel, which, in all probability, from its great size and exalted position, was considered as the father of all the little watches of the sheikhs and chiefs among the tribes. As for the clock not going, that signified but little. Talleyrand said that speech was accorded to man for the purpose of enabling him to conceal his sentiments. The big clock had doubtless his reasons for holding his tongue, and telling no lies; I believe his reputation was increased by his silence, as is the case among many other distinguished characters besides the clock of Erzeroom. Now it came to pass, once upon a time, that the great Pasha or viceroy of the wide realms of this great pashalik chanced to be a philosopher; he knew that clocks, though they might have been made to sell, besides this very primary quality, also ought to go, but no artificer in the land of Armenia was competent to accomplish this desirable end. Whenever a Frank traveler—not that there ever were any travelers by profession in those days—but whenever a Frank doctor or hakim made his appearance in those regions, he was always received with distinguished civility by the Pasha, who, after the preliminaries of coffee, Kef enis ayi—“may your powers of enjoyment be in good order!”—always ended with an expression of his desire that the Frank would immediately set about the repairs of the clock.
“Sir, your excellency,” said the poor man, “I am a doctor; I am not a watchmaker or a mechanic. I don’t understand clocks; it is not in my power to set the clock right; it is not in my line of business. I am very sorry, but, O Effendim, I fear I am unable to meet your wishes in this point.”